The live-action Halo series was so good. Anything else like it these days? I also liked Pantheon, Arcane, Atlas (2024), I Am Mother, Tau, and probably some others I'm forgetting. Total sucker for advanced tech/magic systems that are consistent.
(I even like some kids' shows too, like Tales of Arcadia and Miraculous Ladybug, just for having consistent tech/magic systems... also Daniel Spellbound)
I know of some much older shows with incredibly huge lore, like Star Trek and Stargate, and I do love reading about them, but I'm still struggling to get started with any of their shows/movies themselves, they feel a bit dry.
The second season was actually really good. Unfortunately, I think the first season turned too many people away, and by the time the show got better, it was already too late. Cancelled. Such a shame.
If it came out 15 years ago it would have been a big success. These days there isn't a lot of patience from srudios execs and audiences to allow for a TV series to get it's footing. I'm seeing this with a lot of older good TV shows that wouldn't be successful in today's environment (for example star trek TNG)
That was probably one of the worst video game adaptations I've ever seen. Especially in comparison to recent additions like The Last of Us and Fallout. No disrespect.
To be fair last of us after season 1 was pretty bad too. Halo got better in season 2 but the awful first season killed it. Other then fallout and arcane there haven't been any good game adaptations (on TV). I'd go as far as say that twisted metal was more fun than any of them.
The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone. (Nintendo is a bit of an exception here, but they were always playing a different market than Sony and MS anyway)
This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
The price advantage is going away fast, especially with talk that next-gen consoles will top USD 1000.
All they have left is their prestige first-party products, which they don't seem to really know how to use effectively. Some of them have solid cultural penetration, and could spawn broader media franchises with the right handling.
Another attraction for publishers was (historically) a much lower adoption of piracy.
Part of the sales pitch is you need more than just a torrent client to pirate.
Now in the world of AI I think this moat is evaporating. Hypervisor exploits are dropping like rain and determined individuals can vibe code a reasonably performant emulator in a couple of weeks.
In that world the only reasonable edge you have left is high prestige exclusives and merchandising/physical sales.
Nintendo has this cornered, one of the few companies who can pull off a rabid fan base buying a console they already own because this time there’s a triforce on it.
Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are diluting their own IP and going full digital. Writing is on the wall if you ask me.
The exclusives business model worked for Sony for the ps4 generation for sure. But it seems that the cost of developing ever larger and more ambitious games has ballooned in recent years. Intentionally limiting your distribution seems misguided. Even Sony has been releasing their exclusives on PC too after some exclusivity time.
On the other hand it seems to work for Nintendo which keeps their consoles intentionally underpowered and don’t try to compete with the AAA game expectations with the majority of their titles.
The thing is the whole set of companies making games at Sony and Microsoft are completely built for what we call AAA games. Tons of middle managers, large teams of artists and visual effect specialists, a whole human pipeline built to sand off every single pain point in every moment of their game to make a good content tube. Those studios are incapable of just making a bunch of indie games. They would need to be completely reorganized to an insane degree.
The idea is that the hardware overlaps enough that consumers would rather only buy the generic version which is the PC. It works for gaming and everything else. There was a time consoles thought they could steal share from the PC market by including browsers and whatnot but I think that never panned out as expected
Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC. They ask for a PlayStation or an Xbox or a "Nintendo" (yep that's what people still call the Switch)
In conbinis, there are Xbox and PlayStation gift cards hanging from the shelves, in the local currency.
There are accessories for PS/Xbox/Switch everywhere, more than PC gaming accessories.
And it's not because the PC stuff gets sold out while the consy stuff gathers cobwebs: If that was the case the consoles would stop getting restocked after a few months, but they keep stocking newer stuff. Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
If you go hang out at someone's home, nobody says "Let's go to my bedroom desk and play something on the PC", no they crash on the couch and turn on the TV and fire up FIFA or some other normie shit.
> Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC.
This is still the case in the U.S. for the most part. The point is moreso that barrier to entry is lowering. The SteamDeck is a PC/console and a good example of a possible trend in that direction.
Just a couple weeks ago in Bali someone said "Oh you have a Nintendo too?" and pulled out their Switch. Meanwhile I haven't made a Steam friend in the wild in years
Hell I saw PlayStations in barbershops in Vietnam! There's no way you'd see a PC in those environments.
The Steam Deck certainly reduces the gap, but I've yet to see it penetrate "normie" social circles, and it's still rare in random gaming shops compared to console stuff. Have Valve released their OS for other handheld manufacturers to use? That's probably the only way to end Windows' dominance and improve the coolness factor of "PC" gaming.
Usually means your comments are getting flagged by other users. I’m not going to dig through your comments to speculate on why, but I don’t think there are any automated filters that will kill only some of your comments.
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
No, the main driver is still there. People do not want to build and maintain PCs. Your 14-year-old nephew doesn't want to do it, either. People want to turn on a box and play a game. I am technical and I want absolutely nothing to do with maintaining a PC. I'll take the console experience every single time.
The performance cap on a console makes a big difference to me which is why I only play on the PC. It’s also not rocket science, you can just buy a good gaming PC. Games look an order of magnitude better on the PC in some cases.
You’re mostly correct but there’s truth to the original statement. Back in the PlayStation/N64 through to PS3/Xbox 360, consoles were so different to each other and PCs that porting games was a major task that resulted in very different outcomes.
Since the PS4/Xbox One, they’ve been similar enough in underlying architecture that engines like Unreal have been able to smooth over the differences enough to make multiplatform technically viable. It’s meant companies like Capcom with RE Engine have made a huge success out of selling across all platforms, including PC. That freedom for publishers is a problem for console manufacturers who have fewer 3rd party exclusives as a result.
People can buy a prebuilt pc running steamOS automagically updating itself with immutable images.
The advantage of consoles are:
- insurance that a game or an accesory bought for a console gen will work well for that console gen. In term of game compat this is something Steam tried to with the steam deck but has no way to enforce really.
- availability in retail stores
- ability to sell games in the second hand market but I don't think this is something that is here to stay with the disappearance of physical medias
My take is that almost nobody has a standalone PC anymore, especially kids. Kids these days all start with iPads, them maybe they move up to Macbooks once they get to high school or college. Other than the local LLM fanatics I see here on HN, I have no idea who's buying those PC towers anymore, they seem like fringe relics from the past century.
Consoles also had performance advantages up to PS2. The lightweight execution environment and exotic accelerators used in consoles allowed better gaming experience than CPU/GPU at that time. Cycle-perfect consistency of consoles also allowed games to be better "optimized", such as data aligned to boudaries and arranged on game discs to be streamed and such.
Consoles slowly started losing that plot after the launch of Xbox and GPU development mess of PS3(the PS3 CPU was supposed to be the world's first APU but Kutaragi dropped the ball big time) and now consoles are just a Nespresso experience, with just marginally cheaper hardware tied to proprietary full-priced game discs, which is not worth much.
OS argument is practically valid but... Frankly IMO that's more of a disadvantage of PCs coming from horrible near nonexistent engineering discipline of software engineering than an advantage of consoles.
I know the theories about Microsoft selling Xbox or spinning it off are common on the internet these days. They might even make sense from a high level business prospective. However, I don’t understand how they could do it from a technical standpoint without still having huge leverage on the company buying it. Xbox runs a customized version of NT, DirectX and HyperV as far as I know. Any company buying it would have to get some licensing deal from Microsoft to further develop and maintain NT and HyperV or rely on Microsoft doing the development which both seem unrealistic for any company to wanna pick up, or for Microsoft to give away. I know they don’t really care about Windows these days, but still.
I’m sure if they are forced to (legally or otherwise) they can find a solution, but it would be a thorny thing to split.
In this case it is none of the above and it is about deals on selected ip characters for movie/shows production but there are many ways to "buy" stuff. In theory Microsoft could just shutdown the xbox divisions and just sell the XBox brand + some selected IP rights. The buyer would be free to use whatever tech they decide on next iteration of console/OS.
Netflix saturating the landscape with poorly executed adaptations of Microsoft owned media properties is almost certainly not worth the short term dollars for long-term erosion of their perceived value, especially without some certainty of securing complementary title launches. Given the shuttering of studios to right-size for the cambrian explosion of slop for COVID era hardware, Xbox probably wouldn't be able to make that capital work for them any better than sitting on licences until they accrue nostalgia.
Halo could be (peak) Game of Thrones level in the right hands, which means the right execs, producers and investors just as much as it does creatives.
Unfortunately, the right hands potentially no longer exist. The current generation seems largely unable to produce good things, with few exceptions (notably Andor)
I think Halo could successfully get the Andor treatment (intentional departure from the tone and scope of mainline entries) in the right hands, but so could pretty much anything, and such hands are hard to find.
The majority of GOT isn't hot naked sexy people or swords: it's conversations in rooms. Most good shows are conversations in rooms, which is why it's so surprising we've lost the ability to produce and write them.
Babylon 5 demonstrated that you can keep absolutely everything else crappy (effects, costumes, heck acting and even cinematography), so long as you're good at conversations in rooms.
I don't think you understand the appeal of Halo if you think it can be about people talking in rooms. Halo would have to be something far more complex, like Band of Brothers.
Anything could be game of thrones (early seasons) if it well written. You don't really need any Halo rights if you have good writers and can make a good show. The point of having Halo rights is they let you produce a mid show but have an automatic audience.
It seems that way, but it's not that easy. Starcraft competitions are still on tv in South Korea 28 years later because they got the balance just right, and all the dirty little details of that universe.
In theory you can make any sci fi show about future humans and a couple other species going to war. Should be straightforward.
But getting the balance of that universe right in terms of little details is tricky: Halo has done the heavy lifting already.
Not trusting in Netflix at the moment to deliver (though I own some stock). Fallout, which Amazon exexuted, was on par with Andor ( a Disney series) in my book. Case by case deals make sense to me.
Fallout on par with Andor??? Wild take. The only thing Netflix has ever done that comes close to Andor imo is Bojack. I felt Fallout had one good season then quickly became rudderless and at this point is half a notch above all those shows that I can't even remember how many seasons I've watched because it all blends together.
Beef, Dark, Mindhunters, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and Narcos are also in the same tier as Andor for me. Black Mirror also although it didn’t start with Netflix.
Andor is in a league of its own imo. Once in a generation kind of show.
But it is similar to Fallout in that it was able to break out of its universe. Andor is enjoyable even if one hates Star Wars; Fallout is enjoyable even if you dislike gaming.
I fundamentally do not understand the direction of Xbox. Microsoft seems to lack the commitment to any strategy and seems unwilling to wait for investments to pay off before trying to cut perceived losses.
My “hot take”: they’re going the direction of Disney/Marvel hybrid. Have a few handful of IPs that are extremely successful, milk it out with licensing deals in every vertical (toys, games, merch, cross-dlcs, books, etc). They’re just missing theme parks. The actual game development portion would probably be very small.
Would not complain if Microsoft wanted to drop a few billion on a new US theme park. The Pacific Northwest is pretty light on amusement parks and I could imagine a park with Halo, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Minecraft "Lands" doing gangbusters. Supposedly they're already working with a UK amusement park operator on a Minecraft experience
There are rumours that Microsoft is internally demanding 30% margin from Xbox, and the gaming industry simply doesn't operate with those types of margins long term and it's not even in a position to dictate industry pricing.
It's like the entire company is only satisfied with being #1.
The whole thing is very confused and lacks consistency. The latest rumours are they are going to break up its Game Pass subscription offering so there are different subscriptions for multiplayer, cloud, games, etc. Isn't that the opposite of an effective subscription strategy?
GPUs that were planned for cloud streaming are much more valuable now. It (unfortunately) makes sense for the only real cloud streaming player to significantly revisit pricing.
Success in business is all about short-term thinking. If they destroy the Xbox brand today they can still pick it back up next year. Who else will you go with - Sony?
Valve isn’t trying to make a bunch of games with AND pay for/off all the studios they bought, all while trying to advertise and compete with Sony and Nintendo in hardware.
Steam just sits back and takes money, for the most part. The hardware/software/advertising spend is probably a drop in the bucket compared to MS.
I initially misunderstood OP. However the more I think about it, the more it seems similar though. If Steam is charging game developers a 30-20% cut, that must mean those game developers margins are higher than 30-20% or there will be no point selling on Steam. It seems that Xbox would be expecting their Studios to operate at the same efficiency as others in the market then, no?
No, they’re not even remotely the same. The retailer keeps 30% of the retail price and, out of that, they pay for the upkeep of the store. It’s not 30% pure profit, it’s not even gross profit given they need to pay the card processing fees out of that 30%.
I’m not following how that is a response to what I said. I’m not talking about Valve’s profits. I’m talking about the profit of the game developers selling their games on Steam.
I think I understand why Microsoft costs are higher than others due to their a spending spree, so the break even is much higher.
You said “they’re similar” and I’m refuting that by pointing out that they operate very differently. One is a retailer and one is a developer/publisher. Their operating models are different, so you can’t point at two percentages and say “they’re similar” in any way.
If you're talking about the margins of a video game sale, the gross margins on that are like 99.9% in absolute terms.
You don't seem to understand the difference between the margins on a sale and the averaged margins once the studio development costs are included.
If the store takes 30% you are still left with 70% gross margins but if you have development costs, you maybe only have enough sales to break even or just barely be profitable. A 30% margin on the entire studio means the studio must produce guaranteed successes consistently.
It might also not be obvious but if Microsoft imposed 30% margins, those are a floor, whereas a fee reduces the ceiling. They are not the same even if we assume the target is met.
You’re confusing 2 different things. Microsoft isn’t demanding a “cut,” it’s demanding its business units achieve a 30% profit margin on its investment. I think industry standard is closer to 10% once you factor in games that don’t make a return on their investment.
This type of internal financial management is a sign that the people running Microsoft aren’t interested in how any of the divisions actually work or making strategic decisions about their portfolio. They’re accountants pushing the difficult decisions down
I was really hoping Sing would have a more Producers sort of vibe. Failing theater and director. It was there for the taking, but apparently Disney doesn't think Springtime for Hitler is a good look?
it's easy. imagine a bunch of execs with kids. the execs don't play any video games. their kids aren't allowed any screentime. okay, now they're trying to make a product whose primary audience is Bart Simpson. do you see how that leadership is completely disconnected from their audience?
While I agree, a confusing part for non gamers, is to differentiate Xbox, the games console, from Xbox, the business unit, from Xbox, the Microsoft games publishing business.
Only Xbox, the games console, is having a bad time, the publishing part is doing great with movie licenses, and all the studios that belong to Microsoft, regardless where they sell their games.
As someone who was a die hard Xbox fan since the original all the way up to the One X… Microsoft are just terrible. Getting rid of exclusives, constantly focusing on the wrong things, it’s just a mess. Terrible leadership.
I think they genuinely don't know what to do other than to keep the lights on. The original goal for the Xbox program was to take back American presence in gaming, which they achieved, but shutting down Xbox will undo that with Nintendo still around and Chinese phone games making banks.
XBox was fine up to the Xbox One -- that's when the XBox was co-oped for some broader push for the living room computing and broadcast television integration right at the time this was on the out.
The next failure was Xbox Live. The video game market is a hit-based market with big tent-pole franchises doing large launches. For a modern example, look at the hype around GTA6. Launches sold games and exclusives sold consoles. Microsoft put huge game launches on Xbox Live for their relatively low monthly cost and lost millions on those launches.
They also bought a bunch of game studios which is a terrible strategy for a console maker. Meta made the same mistake with the Quest.
It's was never the lack of commitment to a strategy -- it was just having the wrong strategy to begin with.
But I feel sorry that Xbox gets so much criticism. Xbox itself may have weak game sales because of Windows integration and Game Pass, but separate from that, the first-party games got poor reviews. Microsoft’s wrong strategy (sales shrinking because of Game Pass) is part of it, but Microsoft also failed at quality control for its first-party titles.(like redfall,starfiled etc...)
For the amount of risk in creating film or television adaptations of video games, doesn't seem like an amazing deal for Netflix, but I guess I also wouldn't offer exclusivity on something of mine at that scale for that much time in a quickly developing time like the present.
Regardless, I think the cracks are showing in all entertainment industry. I don't understand why anyone has been buying an XBOX after the 360 given home computing accessibility only got better around the time that generation ended. The line between a console like an XBOX and PC was already extremely blurred back then, and it still doesn't make sense to me to buy a gaming device where your software is tied to a specific generation's hardware. I just wanted to say that since while I don't think this licensing would be a good deal for either party, I resent Microsoft's arrogance about how they think their place in this industry is permanent.
Based on the headline my first thought was "Dumb MSFT!" but after reading TFA, the list of major properties is long and we don't know the proposed terms or counter on critical elements like ancillary rights, cross-media, sub-licensing, theatrical, international and, most-importantly, back-end participation. Just one of these terms can double or halve a deal's value, so we have no way to tell if $500M is crazy high or crazy low.
For example, the deal Sony Pictures made which gave Netflix all global film and sequel rights to KPop Demon Hunters with zero back-end participation on the billions of dollars Netflix is now certain to earn from KPop is widely considered by experts the single worst streaming deal ever made. And that was just one unproven animated kids musical. XBox has proven mega-IP like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Warcraft, Halo, Diablo and Elder Scrolls as well as lots of unproven properties - any one of which might become the next KPop Demon Hunters.
Xbox spent $70B for Activision-Blizzard not that long ago, going through a protracted anti-trust process so a $500m buyout would be acknowledging that they made a severe financial error
> so we have no way to tell if $500M is crazy high or crazy low.
Well, lets take just one of those examples, Minecraft.
Cost apparently $150mil to make, and so far, has earned around $960mil. So if we use the usual doubling of the cost to get to the real cost with marketing and everything, it cost ~$300mil, so that is about $660mil profit.
Now of course that gets split, Xbox wouldn't get 100% of that, but still, even if it got 50%, thats still most of the way to the $500mil they turned down, on just ONE film, and only factoring in the theatrical release profit, not including any money it would have made on merch, or streaming, or anything else.
> In a statement to Puck, Xbox said, “We have received record-breaking interest in our I.P.; Netflix is a valued partner and we are excited for the forthcoming release of our Minecraft and Diablo animated series together, among other adaptations.”
My eyes are about to roll out of my head. Stale intellectual property can make unexpectedly good money for a little while, but this ain't exactly Mickey Mouse. Even Mickey Mouse is out of steam by now.
Microsoft is rejecting the deal simply because they can afford the loss even if they let everything under "Xbox" rot. They will only accept someone willing to overpay.
LoganDark | 5 hours ago
(I even like some kids' shows too, like Tales of Arcadia and Miraculous Ladybug, just for having consistent tech/magic systems... also Daniel Spellbound)
I know of some much older shows with incredibly huge lore, like Star Trek and Stargate, and I do love reading about them, but I'm still struggling to get started with any of their shows/movies themselves, they feel a bit dry.
roosterIllusi0n | 5 hours ago
kleeklee | 4 hours ago
kyriakos | 3 hours ago
donbox | 4 hours ago
rapatel0 | 4 hours ago
LoganDark | 4 hours ago
throwaway314155 | 4 hours ago
kyriakos | 3 hours ago
roosterIllusi0n | 5 hours ago
wewewedxfgdf | 5 hours ago
donbox | 4 hours ago
hakfoo | 4 hours ago
The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone. (Nintendo is a bit of an exception here, but they were always playing a different market than Sony and MS anyway)
This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
The price advantage is going away fast, especially with talk that next-gen consoles will top USD 1000.
All they have left is their prestige first-party products, which they don't seem to really know how to use effectively. Some of them have solid cultural penetration, and could spawn broader media franchises with the right handling.
frez1 | 4 hours ago
WhiteDawn | 4 hours ago
Part of the sales pitch is you need more than just a torrent client to pirate.
Now in the world of AI I think this moat is evaporating. Hypervisor exploits are dropping like rain and determined individuals can vibe code a reasonably performant emulator in a couple of weeks.
In that world the only reasonable edge you have left is high prestige exclusives and merchandising/physical sales.
Nintendo has this cornered, one of the few companies who can pull off a rabid fan base buying a console they already own because this time there’s a triforce on it.
Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft are diluting their own IP and going full digital. Writing is on the wall if you ask me.
MBCook | 4 hours ago
They’re gaming appliances and that will still be a huge draw.
PS: Sony gave up PC publishing, so that argument no longer holds. It was a dumb move as you said.
afavour | 4 hours ago
> This means it's harder and harder to say "here's a unique experience you only get on Xbox" (or Playstation for that matter)
That’s also been the case for a very long time. That’s why they sign deals for exclusives.
eddythompson80 | 4 hours ago
On the other hand it seems to work for Nintendo which keeps their consoles intentionally underpowered and don’t try to compete with the AAA game expectations with the majority of their titles.
MBCook | 4 hours ago
Look at all the amazing stuff in the indie space. Let your developers go wild and make neat games that don’t cost $200 billion each.
You could have so many test exclusives like the more fun and experimental stuff we had in the PS1/2 era.
You don’t have to give up the big games. Just don’t focus entirely on them.
Same problem movie studios have. They chase the “sure things” and just pump more money in to be “more sure”. It’s all more fragile than ever.
eddythompson80 | 3 hours ago
philistine | 3 hours ago
conductr | 3 hours ago
Razengan | 4 hours ago
You're out of touch.
Step outside an echo chamber and you'll see that in most countries, including East Asia and the Middle East, if you take a walk around any big mall, you don't see kids pestering their parents to buy them a PC. They ask for a PlayStation or an Xbox or a "Nintendo" (yep that's what people still call the Switch)
In conbinis, there are Xbox and PlayStation gift cards hanging from the shelves, in the local currency.
There are accessories for PS/Xbox/Switch everywhere, more than PC gaming accessories.
And it's not because the PC stuff gets sold out while the consy stuff gathers cobwebs: If that was the case the consoles would stop getting restocked after a few months, but they keep stocking newer stuff. Meanwhile I have to hunt around and specifically request for Razer or Mad Catz or other PC-specific brands.
> The architectural differences that made a console more compelling than a standalone PC are largely gone.
If you go hang out at someone's home, nobody says "Let's go to my bedroom desk and play something on the PC", no they crash on the couch and turn on the TV and fire up FIFA or some other normie shit.
throwaway314155 | 4 hours ago
This is still the case in the U.S. for the most part. The point is moreso that barrier to entry is lowering. The SteamDeck is a PC/console and a good example of a possible trend in that direction.
Razengan | 4 hours ago
Hell I saw PlayStations in barbershops in Vietnam! There's no way you'd see a PC in those environments.
The Steam Deck certainly reduces the gap, but I've yet to see it penetrate "normie" social circles, and it's still rare in random gaming shops compared to console stuff. Have Valve released their OS for other handheld manufacturers to use? That's probably the only way to end Windows' dominance and improve the coolness factor of "PC" gaming.
throwaway314155 | 3 hours ago
BobbyTables2 | 4 hours ago
Sure, there are advantages to using a keyboard+mouse in a FPS game but it’s a much different gaming experience than a handheld controller.
Razengan | 4 hours ago
I will never forgive Microsoft for killing SideWinder.
Vaushite | 4 hours ago
But I don't get why HN is randomly shadowbanning half my comments and not the other half! This one wasn't shadowbanned.
what | 3 hours ago
Vaushite | 3 hours ago
This one came pre-flagged.
devin | 4 hours ago
No, the main driver is still there. People do not want to build and maintain PCs. Your 14-year-old nephew doesn't want to do it, either. People want to turn on a box and play a game. I am technical and I want absolutely nothing to do with maintaining a PC. I'll take the console experience every single time.
MBCook | 4 hours ago
Vaushite | 4 hours ago
dyauspitr | 3 hours ago
Dylan16807 | 3 hours ago
And you don't need to build a PC to have a PC.
scott_w | 2 hours ago
Since the PS4/Xbox One, they’ve been similar enough in underlying architecture that engines like Unreal have been able to smooth over the differences enough to make multiplatform technically viable. It’s meant companies like Capcom with RE Engine have made a huge success out of selling across all platforms, including PC. That freedom for publishers is a problem for console manufacturers who have fewer 3rd party exclusives as a result.
gucci-on-fleek | 47 minutes ago
With the notable exception of the original Xbox, which used mostly standard PC hardware [0] and ran mostly standard Windows [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_technical_specifications
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_system_software#Original_...
prmoustache | 6 minutes ago
The advantage of consoles are:
- insurance that a game or an accesory bought for a console gen will work well for that console gen. In term of game compat this is something Steam tried to with the steam deck but has no way to enforce really.
- availability in retail stores
- ability to sell games in the second hand market but I don't think this is something that is here to stay with the disappearance of physical medias
exhilaration | 3 hours ago
My take is that almost nobody has a standalone PC anymore, especially kids. Kids these days all start with iPads, them maybe they move up to Macbooks once they get to high school or college. Other than the local LLM fanatics I see here on HN, I have no idea who's buying those PC towers anymore, they seem like fringe relics from the past century.
numpad0 | 3 hours ago
Consoles slowly started losing that plot after the launch of Xbox and GPU development mess of PS3(the PS3 CPU was supposed to be the world's first APU but Kutaragi dropped the ball big time) and now consoles are just a Nespresso experience, with just marginally cheaper hardware tied to proprietary full-priced game discs, which is not worth much.
OS argument is practically valid but... Frankly IMO that's more of a disadvantage of PCs coming from horrible near nonexistent engineering discipline of software engineering than an advantage of consoles.
eddythompson80 | 4 hours ago
I’m sure if they are forced to (legally or otherwise) they can find a solution, but it would be a thorny thing to split.
prmoustache | 12 minutes ago
returnInfinity | 3 hours ago
steele | 4 hours ago
jayd16 | 4 hours ago
zug_zug | 4 hours ago
unsupp0rted | 4 hours ago
Unfortunately, the right hands potentially no longer exist. The current generation seems largely unable to produce good things, with few exceptions (notably Andor)
a34729t | 4 hours ago
caconym_ | 4 hours ago
unsupp0rted | 3 hours ago
Babylon 5 demonstrated that you can keep absolutely everything else crappy (effects, costumes, heck acting and even cinematography), so long as you're good at conversations in rooms.
philistine | 3 hours ago
hattmall | 4 hours ago
unsupp0rted | 3 hours ago
In theory you can make any sci fi show about future humans and a couple other species going to war. Should be straightforward.
But getting the balance of that universe right in terms of little details is tricky: Halo has done the heavy lifting already.
bobbyblackstone | 4 hours ago
For 12 years of rights.
donbox | 4 hours ago
zug_zug | 4 hours ago
TheAtomic | 4 hours ago
ailun | 4 hours ago
Cyph0n | 4 hours ago
But it is similar to Fallout in that it was able to break out of its universe. Andor is enjoyable even if one hates Star Wars; Fallout is enjoyable even if you dislike gaming.
AstralSerenity | 3 hours ago
robmccoll | 4 hours ago
pixelatedindex | 4 hours ago
derektank | 4 hours ago
georgel | 4 hours ago
njovin | 4 hours ago
kettlecorn | 4 hours ago
philistine | 3 hours ago
prmoustache | 17 minutes ago
Do you meam potential upcomimg game that may be vaporware for a decade or two?
tonyhart7 | 4 hours ago
so they switch course midway to focus at AI
guidedlight | 4 hours ago
It's like the entire company is only satisfied with being #1.
The whole thing is very confused and lacks consistency. The latest rumours are they are going to break up its Game Pass subscription offering so there are different subscriptions for multiplayer, cloud, games, etc. Isn't that the opposite of an effective subscription strategy?
rao-v | 4 hours ago
devin | 4 hours ago
Vaushite | 4 hours ago
devin | 3 hours ago
eddythompson80 | 4 hours ago
reactordev | 4 hours ago
MBCook | 4 hours ago
Steam just sits back and takes money, for the most part. The hardware/software/advertising spend is probably a drop in the bucket compared to MS.
eddythompson80 | 3 hours ago
scott_w | 2 hours ago
eddythompson80 | 2 hours ago
I think I understand why Microsoft costs are higher than others due to their a spending spree, so the break even is much higher.
scott_w | 51 minutes ago
imtringued | 58 minutes ago
You don't seem to understand the difference between the margins on a sale and the averaged margins once the studio development costs are included.
If the store takes 30% you are still left with 70% gross margins but if you have development costs, you maybe only have enough sales to break even or just barely be profitable. A 30% margin on the entire studio means the studio must produce guaranteed successes consistently.
It might also not be obvious but if Microsoft imposed 30% margins, those are a floor, whereas a fee reduces the ceiling. They are not the same even if we assume the target is met.
scott_w | 4 hours ago
eddythompson80 | 4 hours ago
bathtub365 | 2 hours ago
asanineassasin | 44 minutes ago
aaronbrethorst | 4 hours ago
Loughla | 4 hours ago
doctorpangloss | 4 hours ago
pjmlp | 3 hours ago
Only Xbox, the games console, is having a bad time, the publishing part is doing great with movie licenses, and all the studios that belong to Microsoft, regardless where they sell their games.
girvo | 3 hours ago
numpad0 | 3 hours ago
wvenable | 2 hours ago
The next failure was Xbox Live. The video game market is a hit-based market with big tent-pole franchises doing large launches. For a modern example, look at the hype around GTA6. Launches sold games and exclusives sold consoles. Microsoft put huge game launches on Xbox Live for their relatively low monthly cost and lost millions on those launches.
They also bought a bunch of game studios which is a terrible strategy for a console maker. Meta made the same mistake with the Quest.
It's was never the lack of commitment to a strategy -- it was just having the wrong strategy to begin with.
NegativeLatency | 2 hours ago
jdw64 | 4 hours ago
xnx | 4 hours ago
"[Netflix] recently made an offer to exclusively license Xbox titles from Microsoft for film and TV adaptations: $500 million for seven years."
Source: https://puck.news/newsletter_content/what-im-hearing-the-pet... (full text shows in reading mode)
herodoturtle | 3 hours ago
demibabs | 3 hours ago
ocd | 3 hours ago
Regardless, I think the cracks are showing in all entertainment industry. I don't understand why anyone has been buying an XBOX after the 360 given home computing accessibility only got better around the time that generation ended. The line between a console like an XBOX and PC was already extremely blurred back then, and it still doesn't make sense to me to buy a gaming device where your software is tied to a specific generation's hardware. I just wanted to say that since while I don't think this licensing would be a good deal for either party, I resent Microsoft's arrogance about how they think their place in this industry is permanent.
mrandish | 3 hours ago
For example, the deal Sony Pictures made which gave Netflix all global film and sequel rights to KPop Demon Hunters with zero back-end participation on the billions of dollars Netflix is now certain to earn from KPop is widely considered by experts the single worst streaming deal ever made. And that was just one unproven animated kids musical. XBox has proven mega-IP like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Warcraft, Halo, Diablo and Elder Scrolls as well as lots of unproven properties - any one of which might become the next KPop Demon Hunters.
bathtub365 | 2 hours ago
Idiot211 | 2 hours ago
Oh dear, someone forgot to read the article.
intothemild | 2 hours ago
Well, lets take just one of those examples, Minecraft.
Cost apparently $150mil to make, and so far, has earned around $960mil. So if we use the usual doubling of the cost to get to the real cost with marketing and everything, it cost ~$300mil, so that is about $660mil profit.
Now of course that gets split, Xbox wouldn't get 100% of that, but still, even if it got 50%, thats still most of the way to the $500mil they turned down, on just ONE film, and only factoring in the theatrical release profit, not including any money it would have made on merch, or streaming, or anything else.
sublinear | an hour ago
My eyes are about to roll out of my head. Stale intellectual property can make unexpectedly good money for a little while, but this ain't exactly Mickey Mouse. Even Mickey Mouse is out of steam by now.
Microsoft is rejecting the deal simply because they can afford the loss even if they let everything under "Xbox" rot. They will only accept someone willing to overpay.